User blog:GlitterInformer/Doki Doki! Pretty Cure/Glitter Force Doki Doki SDC: Episode 33 (Sub)
Episode 32 (Sub) | Table of Contents | Episode 34 (Sub) Japanese title: “Arisu’s Papa Arrives! A Sleepover at the Yotsubas’!” Hello, everybody! Welcome back to another dub-less episode of Doki Doki! Pretty Cure. Now, there’s a lot riding on this episode. This is because as much potential as Arisu Yotsuba has had, her execution has been pretty lacking. This is because she doesn’t get much time in the spotlight, and when she does, she doesn’t have a character arc. The only consistent things about her have been that she’s rich and calm. What other things there are have been dropped pretty quickly, so unlike the other four Cures, Arisu has no ongoing story of her own. So far: *In episode 4->3, Arisu joined Pretty Cure. We delved into her past and why she abhors violence. But in this episode, she got over her fear of fighting extremely quickly. It hasn’t been brought up since her debut as Cure Rosetta. *In episode 13->10, Arisu had a very entertaining episode where she did her best in a contest to win a golden rose. Her opponent, Reina Itsutsuboshi, was a cheating scumbag who did everything she could to sabotage Arisu and her friends, but Arisu’s ladylike grace and charm saved the day and earned Pretty Cure the rose. This episode is the best showcase of Arisu as a character. However, Arisu still doesn’t have any problems that she needs to overcome. Episode 13->10 built up Arisu’s anger issues as a major flaw, but we never saw this in action. She was never anything more than calm, even when Reina was at her worst. *Episode 25->19 was supposed to be a major episode for Arisu, where she grew stronger as a Pretty Cure, earned Cure Ace’s approval, and unlocked a new power. The problem is that Arisu was shoved to the side in her own focus episode in favor of Sebastian and Marmo. As I said in my sub/dub comparison of that episode, I did enjoy it anyway. But it was still a shame that after all this time taken away from Arisu by the Regina arc, which focused way too much on Mana, she never got the spotlight back. Basically, Arisu is severely underutilized and underdeveloped. What's worse is that in her only role, being the classy and rich girl, she's overshadowed by Aguri, who is also a classy and rich girl and has been getting more focus than her. But it isn’t too late to save Aguri. The Pretty Cure franchise has a few characters that are lackluster for most of their seasons and then become good characters near the end of the show. The best example of this is Listol from HUGtto! Pretty Cure, the season that aired in 2018. Listol is a villain who just stands in the background giving orders for most of the season. He’s like a cardboard cutout, and he may as well not be there. But in episode 39 out of 49, Listol finally got his day in the limelight. We got info on his backstory and saw that he was an awesome fighter. That episode singlehandedly turned a forgettable villain into an awesome one. And if it happened to Listol, who’s to say it can’t happen with Arisu? Before we begin, it’s important to note that the usual mp4 player on animesim.com (formerly animepark.net) isn’t working for this episode. It plays episode 37 instead of episode 33. You’ll have to use another player instead, which sucks because all the others seem to spit out popup ads. Also, animejolt.com doesn’t seem to be working anymore, which is a shame. Maybe it’ll start working again sometime after I post this article. But its video player hasn’t been playing anything at all for the past few days… With that, let’s get into the episode. It begins pretty suddenly; we’re thrust into a sleepover the girls are having at Arisu’s mansion. Mana’s trying to make everyone else tell each other whom they have crushes on, which freaks out the fairies. Then, they hear a noise, and Arisu says that it’s her father, who is coming home for the first time in three months. Arisu and the others run out of the mansion to meet her father’s helicopter. Arisu and her father happily reunite, and Arisu introduces him to Makoto and Aguri. It turns out Arisu wasn’t expecting her father to come home so quickly. He asks her if she can fill in his place as president for a banquet with the prime minister of Japan tomorrow, and she agrees. He then immediately heads off for Switzerland. It isn’t clear why he didn’t just call her phone instead of flying all the way to her, but at least they got half a minute of bonding time. We get the title card. Then, we cut back to the mansion, where Aguri is amazed by how well-connected Arisu’s father is. Lance tells her that Arisu’s father is the CEO of the Yotsuba Corporation and has offices all over the world. Of course, being a toddler, Lance has no idea what Arisu’s father actually does. Makoto asks Arisu if it’s tough helping her father all the time. Arisu says that she likes helping her father out because her dream is to put smiles on people’s faces all around the world. She got that dream because of Mana. Aguri wants to hear how exactly that happened, so Arisu tells the group the whole story. Arisu first met Mana and Rikka when she was six years old. Back then, she had a frail body, so her father wouldn’t let her leave the house. One day, she was chasing a butterfly in her front yard. She tripped, but Mana ran in and broke her fall. It turned out Mana was trespassing on Yotsuba property (despite Rikka’s concerns, as usual) because she was chasing the butterfly, too. Arisu apologized for scaring the butterfly off, but Mana was okay with it because she knew a place with a lot more butterflies, and she invited Arisu there. Arisu wasn’t supposed to go, but Sebastian stopped one of the maids from doing anything about it and promised to take the blame. Mana, Rikka, and Arisu all went to a garden and had fun together, even though Arisu did trip and go into a brief coughing fit. Arisu had so much fun with her new friends that she decided she wanted to see even more of the world. The three played together a lot more over the next several weeks. But one day, Arisu caught a fever, which got her father angry with Sebastian. Back then, Arisu’s father was very stern, nowhere near the jovial man we see him as in the present. Eventually, Arisu was made to move abroad so she could go to a place that was better for her health. Sebastian told Mana and Rikka of this the day she had to leave. The girls climbed up a tree and sneaked into Arisu’s bedroom, where she was crying because she didn’t want to leave her friends. When Mana and Rikka asked why Arisu was leaving, Arisu said it was because she’d broken her promise with her father. She wanted to stay with them, but she couldn’t disobey her father. Just then, Arisu’s father came by and ordered Arisu to come, as it was time to leave. Mana locked the door because it was clear that Arisu didn’t want to go. Arisu’s father was about to get his crew of maids to pick the lock, but Sebastian interfered. It was his job to protect Arisu’s happiness at all costs, so since Arisu’s father was threatening her happiness, he was determined to fight whoever he had to. While Sebastian used his butler martial arts skills (seriously, these are a thing in this show), Rikka revealed that Sebastian had given her a tablet that showed her everything about the house. This allowed Mana, Rikka, and Arisu to sneak outside. We get the eyecatches. Then, we dive back into the flashback. Arisu’s father broke into Arisu’s room, only to find that Arisu is already gone. In a thoroughly engaging montage, the Yotsuba maids chased Arisu and her friends throughout the house. But every time, Rikka found something in the house (be it a rolling ball trap or a secret passageway) that allowed the girls to escape. They finally made it out of the mansion, but they weren’t able to leave the property before a huge group of maids appeared right in front of the exit. The girls were trapped. Mana, Rikka, and Arisu feared the worst, but instead of scolding Arisu, her father said that he never knew she was able to run so quickly. Arisu said that being with Mana and Rikka made her healthier. Sebastian agreed and said that since she’d met those two, Arisu had been much livelier. Even though Arisu went against her father’s wishes, he still found that he was happy somehow. Instead of forcing Arisu to come with him, he asked Mana and Rikka to take care of her, much to the girls’ delight. When he asked Mana and Rikka why they went so far to help Arisu, Mana said that it’s important to help a friend in need, and also that… Well, we don’t get to hear the rest, because what’s a Pretty Cure episode without a monster of the week? Marmo has turned the pilot of Arisu’s father’s helicopter into a helicopter Jikochuu. Without a pilot, her father’s helicopter is slowly falling. It’s up to Arisu and her four friends to save him. The girls transform, and Cure Heart does her catchphrase. Usually, the group transformation begins with Mana putting her transformation Cure Lovies onto Sharuru. But this time, since it’s Arisu’s focus episode, it starts with Arisu putting her Lovies onto Lance. While the other four Pretty Cures take on the Jikochuu, Cure Rosetta saves her father and the pilot from the helicopter just before it crashes and explodes. Her father fell unconscious somehow after the Jikochuu appeared, but he wakes up shortly after Rosetta saves him. When he asks who she is, she merely says that she’s Cure Rosetta, a Pretty Cure, before jumping back into the fight. Back at the scene of the fight, Heart and Diamond are dodging the Jikochuu’s lasers, while Sword and Ace are dealing with Marmo’s whip, which is powered-up thanks to her Blood Ring. They’re tiring out, and the Jikochuu is about to finish them off with a big laser when Rosetta interferes by using Rosetta Reflection. We then get an awesome fight scene where Rosetta takes on the Jikochuu all by herself. The Jikochuu shoots a bunch of missiles, but by using Rosetta Wall as essentially a pair of boxing gloves, Rosetta is able to leap off the missiles and get right to the Jikochuu itself, which she beats up with her bare fists. The Jikochuu catches her and is about to shoot a laser right at her face, but she blocks it again using Rosetta Reflection. Heart is concerned when she sees Rosetta struggling to keep Rosetta Reflection going, but Rosetta is confident. After all, she remembers what Mana said to her all those years ago: it’s important to help a friend in need, and also, seeing others smile makes her really happy. Arisu agreed back then, and because of it, she still wants to be just like Mana. So, Rosetta keeps fighting. The Jikochuu’s laser breaks Rosetta Reflection in half, but she uses the halves of the broken shield as swords and throwing knives to further beat up the Jikochuu before catching it by its finger and throwing it into the ground. As Rosetta falls to the ground (very peacefully, even though she’s falling head-first), she says that as a Pretty Cure, her goal is to spread smiles to people around the world. Then, for the first time since episode 4->3, she makes a clover symbol with her hands and invites the Jikochuu to nurture the love between it and her. That’s right: Cure Rosetta said her catchphrase!! Rosetta then performs a new attack with her Lovely Pad: Rosetta Balloon. You’d think that her third attack would produce a shield just like the other two. But nope: it summons a literal balloon. The balloon pops, and out of it comes a bunch of butterflies, which somehow form a chain that ties the Jikochuu up. What's more, Rosetta somehow knows that every time she uses the attack, something different will come out of the balloon, and she tells Marmo to look forward to it. It's a weird attack, but still pretty cool. Now, this whole freaking fight scene has been one giant ode to just how awesome Cure Rosetta can be. Seriously, the whole thing was beautifully animated. It was on the level of episodes 1 and 2. That’s how good it was. But unfortunately, even though this is Cure Rosetta’s fight, Cure Heart gets the coup de grace, as the team finishes things off with Lovely Straight Flush. Marmo teleports away and everything goes back to normal, even the destroyed helicopter. Before Arisu’s father leaves for real this time, he tells Arisu that he saw her mother at an opera in Paris and that she wants Arisu to see her next performance. It turns out that not only is Arisu’s father a super-rich CEO, but her mother is a world-famous opera singer. He also tells Arisu to tell Cure Rosetta that although it’s good to protect people’s smiles, she shouldn’t put herself in too much danger. So, it seems that her father did figure out that Arisu was Cure Rosetta after all, but he doesn’t want to freak her out by telling her. Why else would he figure that Arisu could pass a message along to Cure Rosetta? The helicopter takes off again, and Mana and Aguri tell Arisu to come back inside with them so she can finish telling them the rest of the story. And with that, the episode ends. Overall: This episode was epic. Although we still don’t get any character development for Arisu, we do get insight into her backstory. It was really sweet seeing Mana and Rikka helping Arisu to come out of her shell and fight back against her father. I also like that we got to see her father mature over the course of the episode despite him being a side character who probably won’t appear again aside from a cameo in the final episode or something. But the best part is that we got to see Cure Rosetta being awesome. See, the coolest thing about Arisu is that she’s always calm, cool, and collected. When she fought the Jikochuu this episode, it wasn’t with rage and passion, but with refined grace. It truly is a shame that this episode didn’t make it into the dub. Rosetta kicks butt, and I can’t wait to see what she does next time she’s in the spotlight. Next episode: Ai is in a bad mood, and it’s making the Jikochuu even more powerful! Category:Blog posts